Earlier this week, it was revealed that the Dallas Cowboys requested to interview Green Bay Packers defensive line coach and run game coordinator Demarcus Covington for their open defensive coordinator vacancy. On Friday, the New York Jets announced that they had finished interviewing Covington, along with seven other initial candidates for the job.
The Jets are led by a defensive coach, Aaron Glenn, unlike the Cowboys, but Glenn does not call plays for the defense. Defensive coordinator Steve Wilks
held that role until he was fired mid-season and replaced by interim defensive coordinator Chris Harris, who is also up for the job in 2026.
The fact that Covington is a hot name on the defensive coordinator market is not a surprise. Throughout the year, whenever I’ve talked to sources in coaching (either coaches or their representatives), the two names that came up the most as potential Packers DC replacements for Jeff Hafley, should he leave for a head coaching opportunity, were Covington and Green Bay passing game coordinator Derrick Ansley.
Both Covington (with the 2024 New England Patriots) and Ansley (with the 2023 Los Angeles Chargers) were defensive coordinators at the NFL level in their last stops before Green Bay. They are also from a pool of a few current Packers assistants who have any on-field experience in the league outside of Green Bay.
Expect to keep hearing Covington’s name buzzing around the NFL, especially if Hafley and/or head coach Matt LaFleur end up leaving the Packers, as he could be a potential defensive coordinator candidate for either, too.
Covington took over the Green Bay defensive line after back-to-back internal promotions that went poorly for the team. Jerry Montgomery, who was with the Dom Capers, Mike Pettine and Joe Barry, was let go by the team in 2023. He spent one year with the Patriots in 2024 before resurfacing with the Cincinnati Bengals. This year, the Bengals finished 30th in defensive DVOA, 29th in pass defense and 29th in rush defense.
Montgomery was replaced by Jason Rebrovich, who was promoted from pass-rush specialist (a fancy title for a 3-4 outside linebackers coach) in 2023 under Barry to controlling the entire Packers’ line of scrimmage in 2024 in their new 4-3 defense under Hafley. He lasted one year in that role before being fired last offseason. Currently, he’s the assistant defensive line coach (essentially the assistant to the defensive line coach) with the Buffalo Bills. The Bills currently rank 31st in rushing DVOA defensively.
While the Packers’ defensive line wasn’t perfect this year, there still seems to be interest in Covington, who had Micah Parsons playing the best football of his career up until his injury and seems to have developed fellow defensive end Lukas Van Ness, based on what Van Ness has looked like when he wasn’t dealing with his foot injury (his last two games of the season this year, against the Baltimore Ravens and Chicago Bears, are arguably the best of his career).
Defensive tackle was a mess all year, in part because expected starting nose tackle Kenny Clark was traded just before the season, in part because starting three-technique Devonte Wyatt missed so much time with injury and in part because the roster wasn’t built to make up for those losses. Colby Wooden, who was 273 pounds at the 2023 combine, had to start at nose tackle for this team (he’s clearly put on pounds since his combine weight and has said as much), which was simply not the plan until Parsons fell out of the sky and Clark was a condition of the team getting him.
Early on in games, the Packers’ defense was elite this season. Eventually, though, the depth of their defensive line caught them as games wore on. Hopefully, whether Covington is back or not, that can be fixed in 2026. It really was like Green Bay’s defense (and particularly defensive line) was playing with a shot clock over their head all year. After that first 15-play drive of the game, their legs would give and never come back.
